Research project SWEEPER’s main objective was to put the first generation greenhouse harvesting robots onto the market. As such it contributed to Europe’s leading role in agricultural robotics.
In modern greenhouses there is a high demand to automate labour. The availability of a skilled workforce that accepts repetitive tasks in the harsh climate conditions of a greenhouse is decreasing rapidly. SWEEPER used the technology developed in the recently finished CROPS project to develop, test and validate a robotic harvesting solution for sweet pepper under real-world conditions.
SWEEPER involved 6 partners from 4 different countries (The Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Israel) and was coordinated by Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands.
UMU contributed with research on motion planning, visual servoing, and object detection, and also developed the overall software framework for the robot.
In January 2020 the final scientific paper about the SWEEPER robot was published by the Journal of Field Robotics (Open Access): https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.21937
